


Born to Kill

by took_skye



Series: Living For the Night [11]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Gen, POV First Person, POV Male Character, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-06
Updated: 2011-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/took_skye/pseuds/took_skye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Officer George Foyet is forced to do some quality father-daughter bonding for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born to Kill

**Author's Note:**

> The song used in the piece is "I Can't Decide" by Scissor Sisters.

  
_"Hell is full of dads." ~ George Carlin_

***///***

I’ll confess that, to start, I really wasn’t all that thrilled with the kid. It was tiny, wrinkly, discolored, whiny, and, worst of all, a girl. What the hell was I supposed to do with a female that I couldn’t fuck or kill? I decided that avoidance was best so threw myself into work, avoiding the baby as much as possible. Sadly JJ’s not stupid or naïve and, after some months, essentially demands I spend the entire day with the pudgy pink creature. I immediately start debating the odds of a story about her getting kidnapped flying…the odds aren’t in my favor.

When JJ leaves she sets the thing on the table in a little all-purpose car seat with a list of instructions and dos and don’ts for me to follow. Apparently she doesn’t think I’m intelligent enough to keep something alive for a whole day on my own. Wanting to prove her wrong, and because I haven’t yet had my morning coffee, I decide until I’m awake enough to play nice I’ll just ignore the critter. I let it sit in its little seat while I go have some coffee and pancakes.

The first squeal I ignore, the second I sigh at as I set my coffee down and go make sure the little shit machine’s still breathing and has all its limbs. It does. I shrug and head back into the kitchen. There’s silence for a while, then another high-pitched squeal akin to the sound JJ’s cat made in its last moments. I lean back from the counter, pancake still in mouth, to look at the infant. No signs of distress, just sitting there looking at me expectantly. I go back to eating. Then suddenly a wail of near eardrum piercing volume comes out of her.

“What the fuck?!” I storm over to the table, fork still in hand, and glare at it as I do my best not to just stab and pop its tiny little lungs. Then I see it and I can’t believe I’ve missed it for even this long. The little creature in the pink jumper quirks its lips some in a smug sort of smile as its eyes lock onto, into, mine. “You’re playing with me, aren’t you?” I ask as if she could really answer with words and not just the tiny giggle that bubbles out her lips with just enough spittle to remind me she’s only a few months old.

She is. I can tell. And the longer I look into those eyes the more I can see they’re like mine. JJ kept saying that it had my eyes, but I dismissed it as her attempts to get me to bond or something. Now I see that JJ wasn’t lying. They’re these lovely little deep brown holes that match my own. “Ya bored?” I ask knowing I’d be in her position. “Wanna go out? Have a little…father-daughter time?” JJ’s words, not mine, but I’m a little more amendable to them at the moment.

The kid leans into me, so much so that her tiny head knocks against mine some. Annoying, but I’ll give it credit for not crying over bumped heads. Assuming I’ve gotten a yes I finally set the fork aside and work on figuring out the contraption that is the car sear. I’m not totally sold on the kid yet, but at least now I see some kind of potential.

***

Because I’m not about to bring the thing into the station (what’s it gonna do there? go on a raid with me and a bunch of the guys?) I decide to just drive for a while before finding myself at _Nightingale’s_ , my old boss, Gideon’s, place. This might work, guy certainly knows a psycho when he meets one. A few struggles and numerous curses at the newest bane of my existence called Safe Snuggle Car Seat and I finally get the whole thing free and portable once again.

There are a lot of things you can’t prepare for in having a kid and losing your usual swagger is one of them. Ever tried sauntering into a place carrying a few extra pounds of drooling flesh in a hard plastic container on one arm? Not possible. So I decide to play things a little different; I grab my glasses out the car and head into the bar baby-first with the best proud papa face I can muster. “Jason!” I call out to the man behind the bar. “How the hell have you been? Look what I got!”

Gideon calmly slides his eyes and then head from his current customer to me. There’s always been this thing I found both impressive and annoying about Gideon, his slow pace. Everything seems to hit him about five seconds after it does others yet I know, I just know, he’s registered, understood, and cataloged it before anyone else. By the time he comments on my presentation I’m already settling up at the bar and plunking the kid down on the stool next to me. “You have a child.” So simple, so direct, so deep…well, simple and direct anyway.

“That I do, Jason.” I smile pleasantly before I drop the look for a more teasing one. “Don’t you want to know where it came from?”

“My guess is Jennifer Jareau, your girlfriend.” Sometimes Gideon’s no fun at all. “So, I assume from the pink it’s a girl, yes? What’s her name, George?”

“Officer Foyet,” I correct with a grin and a point to Gideon, though he doesn’t react. He simply waits for me to answer his question and, knowing him, he’ll stay waiting until I give in or just leave. No fun at all. Leaving seems the bigger defeat so I fold with a sigh. “Lilith.”

“Lilith?” He seems to consider the name as he pours some wine into a glass and then takes a small sip. “Why Lilith, George?”

I smirk a little. “Oh, we’re not going to play that game, Jason.”

The man goes to scratch his nose a touch, a disarming move, before smiling with a movement of his hand to show his palm (nothing up my sleeve, George, I swear). “I ask you how you came up with your daughter’s name and I’m playing a game?” His tone’s a mix of amusement, disbelief, challenge, and hurt. I’ve heard the combination before, when the man used to do the occasional interrogation on the force.

“Well I know you, Jason, you’re going to read all sorts of things into the name.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah, and then you’ll turn it all around on me,” I tell him before smiling over at what’s probably the youngest thing to enter the bar pitching my voice a little higher. “But Jason can’t do that, can he? No he can’t,” I turn back to Gideon, dropping the baby-friendly falsetto, “because I didn’t name the butterball. JJ did.”

“You didn’t have a part in naming your child?”

I shrug. “Not worth the investment, not until I’m sure anyway.”

“Sure?” Gideon takes another sip of his wine even though he still hasn’t asked me if I wanted a drink. “Sure of what?”

“That she’s worth it.”

“And what would make Lilith worth it, George?”

I step back off the stool and lift the car seat onto the bar. “Whaddya think of her, Jason? Honest now, it’s important.” Gideon suddenly seems a little wary, unsure what I’m asking and what his answer might mean for the future of the kid. “Go on, Jason, give me your opinion, not like I’ll kill it if you say the wrong thing,” I let my dark chuckle roll out my throat before resting my head on the back of the car seat with big eyes as if waiting for the word of God.

“Your daughter seems just fine, George.”

“ _Just_ fine?”

“I know that Lilith probably doesn’t seem all that…impressive…right now but she’s not even a year old yet. As she grows she’ll develop a real personality, she’ll begin to speak and walk, she’ll start to call you Daddy and want to play and grow up to be just like her father.” He’s trying to tease out the humanity in me so I won’t hurt the baby or something.

“You’re boring me,” I tell him before straightening up. “Just look in her eyes and tell me what you see.”

The man behind the bar seems a little reluctant at first, but he bends down some to look the kid right in the eyes just as I request. I wonder if he sees what I saw, if he’ll even tell me if he does. After a moment or two Gideon straightens up, looks at me, and says only, “They’re like yours.” Not much to go on if it weren’t for the guy’s tone, the tone is everything. The pleasantry of it is gone and replaced with a sort of deadpan that’s better suited on Hotchner. Jason doesn’t want to say what he saw, but he doesn’t want to deny it outright either.

“See, that’s what I saw…JJ too. Just like mine.” I smirk some before going to grab up the kid, car seat and all, and then smile pleasantly. “Thanks Jason, see ya around!” That was all I needed, no reason to waste any more of my time.

***

“Ya wanna see something?” I ask as I reach into my back pocket, pull out my favorite knife, and then flick the blade out from its handle. I’ve put her on the coffee table so, sitting on the couch, we’re almost eye-to-eye. “Shiny, isn’t it?” I twist the blade in my hand so it catches the light, glows like the sun at certain angles.

The baby watches its every move, transfixed, closing her eyes only when the reflection hits her directly and risks blinding her. When I start to spin the handle between my fingers causing the blade to whirl about she smiles in that same lazy turning of her lips she had at breakfast.

“Sharp too,” I tell her as I poke the tip with my thumb a touch. “Too sharp for you, but maybe when you’re bigger.”

She giggles.

“If you’re not a great big disappointment maybe I’ll get ya your own. Nice ivory handle,” I lean back on the couch and start to spin the blade once again as much for my amusement as for hers. “Something a little more…dainty that you can tuck into your purse or something.” I get a raspberry for that comment which gives me a laugh. “What? No purse? Okay, your pocket then, the back right, like me. But I still say ivory for the handle, ivory’s nice. We can have Lil carved into it too maybe. Lil Foyet,” I chuckle, “it’s good, right?

The kid yawns this time. Maybe it wasn’t that funny?

“Well I thought it was clever.” Another yawn in reply. I always forget that these things need more sleep than the average person. I stop the blade without so much as shaving a single layer of skin off my hand before tucking it away and back into my pocket. “You know you’re going to be a hell of a lot more fun when you can actually stay up for longer than a few hours.”

I work at separating the infant from the rest of the car seat before picking it up. Most the time babies aren’t really fans of mine, same with animals, but mine seems unconcerned. Quiet with keen, even while sleepy, eyes looking up at mine. I find myself actually making the effort to ensure I’m not about to drop it before moving towards her bedroom. “How about,” I drop my voice to whisper automatically, “we suffocate a goldfish by pulling it out the fishbowl when you turn two?” The suggestion earns me a sleepy smile. “Gotta say, I’m glad JJ didn’t go with her first choice,” I ease her down into the crib. “I’d have definitely had to kill you if you were named Amanda.” I chuckle a touch, she smiles before stretching as if trying to get comfortable.

I go to leave, let it sleep or whatever, when that high-pitched squeal returns. I turn back. “What?” Nothing. I head back over and look down. For a moment or two it feels like we’re just staring each other down, then she opens her mouth and lets out single, long, sound that seems to be a note to a song. I sigh and lean on the crib. “You know you’re kinda a pain in the ass?” There’s another smile then another note. I arch a brow playfully. “JJ sings to you, doesn’t she? That what you want? A song?” I think a moment, then sing the first thing that comes to mind. “I’m not a gangster tonight, don’t wanna be the bad guy, I’m just a loner baby, and now you got in my way,” she starts to smile, “I can’t decide whether you should live or die, oh you’ll probably go to heaven, please don’t hang your head cry,” her eyes close, her smile stays, “No wonder why my heart feels dead inside, it’s cold and hard and petrified,” I begin to back out the room, “lock the doors and close the blinds, we’re going for a ride.” I’m out the room and close the door most of the way behind me. “Later, Lil.”

***///***

 _"Still you are aware of the others so you must be in some basic sense aware of who... what we are." ~ Mara Chaffee, Village of the Damned_


End file.
